Tamiment
[1][2][3] The Tamiment Playhouse entertained guests with weekly revues and served as a training ground for many prominent Broadway and TV performers and writers.
Playhouse alumni have included Danny Kaye, Imogene Coca, Jerome Robbins, Carol Burnett,[4] Woody Allen,[5] Neil Simon,[6] and many others.
Tamiment was a popular resort for Jewish singles[7] and has been referred to as "a progressive version of the Catskills"[8] and "a pillar of the Poconos tourist industry.
[1] In the summer of 1919 Mailly had visited Unity House in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, a resort operated by a local chapter of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU).
[1] While she was there she learned that an adjoining 2,100 acre property was for sale, promptly made a deposit, and successfully raised the money to buy the land and establish a new camp.
[18] Author Martha LaMonaco wrote, "Legally, the camp had been established as a separate entity from the school, but the two organizations shared both a common political and social ideology and numerous board members.
"[21] The PECS board had envisioned Camp Tamiment as a country summer school, but Mailly and manager Ben Josephson chose to turn the facility into a regular resort.
[23][13] Josephson described the Tamiment facility as "a summer resort that has attained top rank in the field, outranking by far many of the privately owned vacation places in both beauty and business.
"[19] In 1956 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revoked Tamiment's tax-exempt status, ruling that the People's Educational Camp Society's main business was running a summer resort for profit and that its social agenda was secondary.
)[26][27] After multiple court appeals, the PECS lost its case for tax-exemption, and in 1963 Tamiment's parent corporation had a tax bill of almost ninety thousand dollars.
[25] On September 18, 1963, Josephson recommended to the PECS board that the resort be sold,[25] and on June 28, 1965, Camp Tamiment was acquired by a Delaware corporation in a multimillion-dollar deal.
[3] During the 1970s and 1980s, stars Joan Rivers, Frankie Valli, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Alan King, and Donny and Marie Osmond performed at Tamiment.
[9] Las Vegas entertainer Wayne Newton purchased the resort in 1982 for a reported $15 million and planned to make it the flagship property in a national chain of timeshare hotels.
"[25] In March 2005 Tamiment owner Suong Hong sold the resort for $64 million to developers Greystone Capital Partners of Paoli, Pennsylvania.
[7][32] His shows combined music and dance with comedy, and the people Liebman hired included Danny Kaye, Sylvia Fine, Imogene Coca, Betty Garrett, Jules Munshin, Herbert Ross, and Jerome Robbins.
[34] After being a hit with hotel guests, Once Upon A Mattress was significantly expanded for Off-Broadway, later moved to Broadway, and became one of the most frequently produced musicals in the United States.
